Wednesday, July 26 2006 14:39 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Dubai: The captain of an Indian ship and his crewmembers, held for murder, will soon be home after a Fujairah Court of Appeal ruled that courts in the emirate had no authority to try an accused involved in a crime committed in international waters.

Indian ship captain Jitendra Malhotra and five other crewmembers had been convicted for killing fellow sailor Sudheer Nonia Jagannathan after an argument over the blasphemous Danish cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad.

The incident occurred in February this year aboard the Norwegian oil tanker Champion Pioneer while it was sailing in international waters off the Fujairah emirate of the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

The oil tanker had set sail from New Mangalore port in Karnataka.

Earlier, a District Court in Fujairah had sentenced the captain to life imprisonment and handed five-year prison terms to the other accused, the Khaleej Times reported.

The court had claimed jurisdiction in the case on the ground that the emirate was the closest port of call of the ship.

The Indian embassy in the UAE had pleaded for transfer of the case to India as the incident took place in international waters and the victim and the accused were Indians, the report said.

According to Meena Mathew, lawyer for the shipping company, the captain and crew members would be released soon after legal formalities are completed.

She also said the family of the victim had pardoned the accused after receiving blood money from the families of the accused sailors.

"So the matter is solved now," she was quoted as saying in the report.